Education for Active World Citizenship
Currently there is growing attention both in scholarly and popular writing with the process of globalization. Globalization is an empirical process of world integration driven by a variety of economic, cultural, political, and ideological forces as seen in such areas as market expansion, a global production pattern as well as cultural homogenisation. In the fields of economics, politics, technology, environment or health, we see greater collaboration and interdependence. Now, international conferences, common trade agreements and multinational projects are striving to find solutions to long-standing difficulties and to promote development in areas where the problems have become too great to be resolved by a single organization of State. We are learning, out of necessity, that competition has its limitations. To give one example: many of the issues in trade negotiations which go on in Geneva these days are about labor standards, environmental policies and human rights (such as products fabricated by child labor). These are all deeply domestic matters which are now part of intemational affairs.
Has education been changing as quickly as the world economy? How are we preparing children to meet the demands of the world society? What role are schools playing in the formation of active world citizens able to make real contributions to the creation of a more peaceful society?
This spirit of world citizenship is highlighted in the 1999 UN General Assembly Declaration on a Culture of Peace: "recognising that peace is not only the absence of conflict, but requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation."
Education is uniquely placed to help deal with the major problems facing the world society: violent conflict, poverty, the destruction of the natural environment, and other fundamental issues touching human beings everywhere. Education provides information, skills and helps to shape values and attitudes. Yet many children fall outside the formal education system. As the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koichiro Matsuura, noted recently in Geneva (8 September 2001) "The 113 million school-age children who are out of school, high rates of repetition and dropout, and the 875 million adults who are illiterate are evidence of the fact that the size and complexity of the Education for All challenge are too great for governments alone to address, even with the best of intentions and effort."
Education for All is the name of a global initiative launched by UNESCO and member governments in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 which was to serve as a framework for the design of education policies and reforms around the world for the 1990s. At the 1990 meeting the aim was to meet the basic learning needs of all, children, youth and adults, both in and out of the school system. However, in practice, the aims were reduced to meeting minimum learning needs primarily through improved primary education. Even this goal was not met. Therefore, 10 years later, in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000, was held the UNESCO-sponsored World Education Forum which renewed the aims of Education for All and set 2015 as the target date. The six goals set out at Jomtien were reaffirmed at Dakar:
1.expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children
2.ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality
3.ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes
4.achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults
5.eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality
6.improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.
Yet it is obvious that education is not limited to the formal school system. There are many agents of education: family, media, peers, and associations of all sorts. Nevertheless, the schools play a central role, and people expect schools to be the leaders in the educational process. Unfortunately, there are times when schools are left alone as the only conscious instrument of education. Therefore, teachers need to analyse how other agents of society contribute to the educational process or, more negatively, may hinder the educational process or promote destructive attitudes and values.
Education has two related aims. One is to help the student to function in society, be it the local, the national and the world society. The other aim is to help in the fullest development of the individual's physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual capacities.
There are three related ways to help prepare students for a fast-changing world in which people, ideas, goods and services increasingly cross State frontiers. The one is to teach those skills needed to be able to function effectively in the world: skills of goal setting, analysis, problem solving, research, communication, and conflict-resolution skills. We need to place more emphasis on communication skills in our schools with an emphasis on personal expression through language and the arts. Children need opportunities to acquire skills in writing, speech, drama, music, painting and other arts in order to find their own voices and expressions.
Another approach is to stress content with an emphasis on modern history and geography, ecology, economics, civics and the history of science and technology. A variation is to build learning around key concepts. The curriculum can be organized through the use of broad themes around which the content is selected and organized. Interdependence, change, communication, complexity, culture, scarcity and conflict are examples of such organizing conceptual themes.
The third approach is to stress the values needed for living in a global society: self-confidence in one's own capacity, concern and interest in others, an openness to the cultural contribution of other societies. There needs to be a willingness to live with complexity, to refuse easy answers or to shift blame to others. In practice a good teacher makes a personalized combination of all these elements.
One must be realistic in evaluating the difficulties of restructuring educational systems to make them future oriented and open to the world. We all know the heavy structures of educational systems and the pressures to conform to the status quo. We must not underestimate the narrow nationalistic pressures on the teaching of social issues nor of the political influences on content and methods.
In order to understand the limits and the possibilities of change, teachers must be prepared to carry out research on the local community. They must be able to analyse their specific communities. It is always dangerous to make wide generalizations on the role of the family, the media, of religion etc as if it were always the same in all parts of the country or the same in all social classes and milieu.
Thus, teachers should be able, with some sociological training, to carry out studies on the formation of attitudes, values and skills of their students by looking at the respective role of the family, the content of the media, and student participation in associations. Such studies can be carried out in a cooperative way among several teachers so as to be able to go to greater depth. Teachers could look for information to help answer such questions as "Are any groups excluded from participating in the community?" "How can possible marginalisation be counteracted?" "How can one study environmental and ecological issues locally?" "What is the significance of different role models such as peers, parents, and educators?" "In what ways can non-formal and informal learning environments be furthered?".
There are more and more teachers who realise the direction of current world trends. Migration puts other cultures on one's door step. We all need to be encouraged by the advances being made. We can help one another so that we may develop the culture of peace and active world citizenship together.
Rene Wadlow
|
